skins of ill shaped fishes

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The Last Month

I am surrounded by boxes. Rows of cardboard holding my family’s life, or at least our pots and pans, toys and games, photo albums and framed art fill our garage, linger in corners, and wait half full, flaps agape, to close over the remaining odds and ends, legos, plates, knickknacks, and books.

Of books, if I’m honest, I’m down to fewer than a half dozen: a biography of Duke Ellington; a paperback mystery I’m saving for the plane ride up to Oregon in June to find a place to live, slim enough to fit in a pocket, just enough pages for two flights and a couple of nights in a hotel; a Sherlock Holmes pastiche, likely to be consumed and left at the library in Encinitas before the end of June; and Crow by Ted Hughes.

In just a few weeks my family and I will be unpacking those books and boxes in Beaverton, a reality still hard to wrap our heads around.

That every time we now do something (go to a Padres game or eat at our favorite burrito spot) is the last or nearly the last time we’ll do so is sobering. So too each of my final days at San Dieguito.

I’ve been to my last SDA games, a pair of lacrosse playoffs. My last coffee with the principal has come and gone, and how hard it was to say goodbye to those familiar and friendly faces, some of whom I’ve known for years. In a week I’ll go to my final play in the Clayton Liggett Theater, Picnic, a midcentury emotional potboiler. This Wednesday is my last Spring Concert. The Friday after that is the last assembly of the year.

As emotional are the final visits to classrooms, those places where the truly important work happens at a school. Some of my favorite memories at SDA are from classrooms, where students and teachers work together to imagine, create, learn.